An Outlook into the Future of Egocentric Vision (2308.07123v2)

Abstract: What will the future be? We wonder! In this survey, we explore the gap between current research in egocentric vision and the ever-anticipated future, where wearable computing, with outward facing cameras and digital overlays, is expected to be integrated in our every day lives. To understand this gap, the article starts by envisaging the future through character-based stories, showcasing through examples the limitations of current technology. We then provide a mapping between this future and previously defined research tasks. For each task, we survey its seminal works, current state-of-the-art methodologies and available datasets, then reflect on shortcomings that limit its applicability to future research. Note that this survey focuses on software models for egocentric vision, independent of any specific hardware. The paper concludes with recommendations for areas of immediate explorations so as to unlock our path to the future always-on, personalised and life-enhancing egocentric vision.

• The paper presents a comprehensive survey of egocentric vision, mapping current research tasks to future integration of wearable computing devices.
• It details methodologies for localization, action recognition, and social behavior analysis, emphasizing robust 3D scene understanding and context-aware anticipations.
• The study highlights real-world challenges and privacy concerns, urging the development of multi-modal, privacy-focused solutions for AI-integrated systems.

An Outlook into the Future of Egocentric Vision

The paper "An Outlook into the Future of Egocentric Vision" offers a comprehensive survey of the current state and anticipated future of egocentric vision. The authors aim to map the trajectory for integrating wearable computing devices with outward-facing cameras and digital overlays into everyday life. The narrative approach of this work seeks to underscore the practical and theoretical implications of such integration by drawing comparisons between the present capabilities and the expectations for the future.

The paper outlines several visionary scenarios in which an imagined device, termed EgoAI, transforms daily activities in domains such as domestic life, industrial work, tourism, policing, and entertainment. These scenarios emphasize the potential applications of egocentric vision in providing personalized and contextually aware assistance to users.

From a technical standpoint, the paper systematically surveys various research tasks essential for enabling such rich interactions from egocentric video data. Key tasks include:

1. Localisation and 3D Scene Understanding: Critical for enabling navigation and interaction within spatially aware environments. Despite advancements in 3D scene understanding, existing systems require enhanced robustness to dynamic content captured from wearable perspectives.
2. Recognition and Anticipation: This covers both action and object recognition. The paper highlights the need for temporal and multimodal approaches to understand the contextual nuances of actions in egocentric videos. Recognition is expanded by anticipation, which assesses the ability to predict future actions and interactions, a core capability for preventive and assistive applications.
3. Gaze Understanding and Social Behavior Analysis: Understanding gaze and social interaction can facilitate more interactive and immersive experiences. The integration of gaze prediction with behavioral understanding presents opportunities to develop socially aware systems that can adapt to nuanced human interactions.
4. Full-Body and Hand-Held Object Interaction: These are foundational for applications ranging from health monitoring to augmented reality interfaces. While current models for pose estimation and hand-object interactions perform satisfactorily in controlled environments, significant improvements are required for real-world generalizability.
5. Person Identification, Summarisation, and Dialogue: These tasks encompass the personal and communicative aspects of the envisioned future. Summarisation from continuous streams of egocentric video and VQA pose substantial challenges due to the need for effective noise filtering and contextual understanding over long durations.
6. Privacy Concerns: Acknowledging the potential risks associated with continuous personal data capture, the paper calls for stricter privacy-preserving designs and practices in wearable systems.

An overview of available datasets underscores the ongoing efforts for comprehensive data collection needed to push the research frontier in egocentric vision. The authors posit that existing datasets suffice for certain tasks but remain limited for complex, real-life functions anticipated for the future.

The paper concludes by reflecting on the confluence of individual tasks towards enabling EgoAI. It prompts the exploration of integrated systems capable of performing parallel and interdependent tasks, emphasizing the necessity for multi-modal and holistic approaches in future research endeavors.

The substantial groundwork reviewed in this paper, both in terms of current accomplishments and future aspirations, is critical for researchers aiming to bridge the gap between today's capabilities and future potentials in egocentric vision. A careful examination of this survey provides abundant insights into prospective integration paths of AI within ubiquitous wearable computing platforms.